Christine Gray wrote:

>5 As evidence that floral honey can have some component not available in
>sugar honey - presumably not in pollen as honey is used in healing on its
>own - I quoted research into the healing qualities of floral honey that has
>been shown to be more effective than sugar honey, giving the reference to
>IBRA, Healing and Honey, 2001, ISBN 0-85092-240-8.  My point being that if
>honey had been found to act differently to sugar honey in healing,  then we
>could not logically exclude the possibility that sugar honey was not equal
>to floral honey  in other biological uses - it might be, it might not be, it
>would depend on where the difference lay and whether that difference was
>relevant in the other biological use (here, the development of bee grubs) .
>
If I am not mistaken, Bill, in a very thorough post explained the
activity of topical honey the the basis of the benefits of using such,
he also mentioned some of the pitfalls, which is why I suspect some have
chosen to disregard what he has written.   "Another key enzyme is
glucose oxidase. Its concentration will determine the difference between
most honeys and their efficacy in wound treatment. (It is an interesting
enzyme. It keeps honey from fermenting  by making hydrogen peroxide at
any honey/water interface. So it creates hydrogen peroxide at the
contact point of honey and a wound, and the wound is continually awash
in Hydrogen peroxide as long as there is plenty of glucose oxidase.) "
Where honey shows improved activity vs. unprocessed sugar syrup is, in
large part due to peroxide release which is more a factor of processing
time than the chemical makeup of honey.

I believe that it was posted here that "honey" made from sugar syrup (we
really need a more precise word than that for this material) is
equivalent in terms of generating peroxides when the initial
concentration of sucrose approximates that of nectar.  Yep, once again,
courtesy of Bill:  "In fact, honey from bees fed nothing but cane sugar
solutions is equivalent to honey from plant nectar with equivalent
sucrose concentrations and would be as effective in wound treatment. "

So the mystery substance you have identified (well, OK - someone else
identified it for you) in a backhanded way is peroxide.  I will suggest
thought, that a better source would be Boots the Chemist, he sells a 3%
solution that is excellent for wound management and won't leave the
patient all sticky.  He/she won't taste as sweet though.

Since this (glucose oxidase) is added by the bees, and is not present in
the nectar, I would ask you, how is it that you got from the observation
that honey is used in the odd case in medicine and somehow transformed
that into an explanation of the superiority of honey over sugar syrup?

In other words, when I asked the following very specific, simple question:

"Can you name a necessary substance (not sugar), found in honey, but not syrup, that is not also found in far more massive quantities in pollen?"

What you really should have said was, simply, no.

Keith

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